Alien Romance: Celestial Angels Complete Set: A Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, BBW, Alien Invasion Romance)
Page 17
“My people depend on me,” he said in a strained voice.
She came up behind him, sliding a hand around his side and up his chest again, moving up against his back. He shivered again, his head tilting back slightly as she set her cheek against his spine. “And who do you depend on? Who is taking care of you? Who sees to your needs?”
He grabbed her hand again, and for just a moment tugged on it as if starting to extricate himself from her grasp. But then another shudder went through him, and he simply covered her hand with his own. “I….” long silence. Then he looked down. “No one. There is no one. I am always the one with the weight on my shoulders.”
“That’s wrong.” She hugged him gently from behind, and he gasped softly. “You can rely on me. If you’ll let yourself. I only want the truth because I’m confused and need clarity. And I want to know...everything about you. Most of all, I need to know why you were so excited at what you found in my blood.”
He turned around in her arms, staring down at her, his body taut against hers and his hands just barely daring to settle on her shoulders. “You are so soft….” he murmured breathlessly, completely distracted by having her bundled against him.
“Please, tell me. If you can’t make love with me, then at least be honest about why.” She looked up into his face, into eyes that burned at the backs, and felt his hands start to radiate that gorgeous, tingling heat just from touching her.
His breath blew on her lips, and for a moment she thought he would kiss her. Then--he let go, pulled away with what must have been an enormous effort. But only enough to walk into the great room and sit down on the couch, passing a hand over his brow.
“I am the leader of a military detachment sent on long-term mission from a planetary cluster in what you would call the Crab Nebula. Our mission has been to collect genetic samples of flora, fauna and intelligent life, in order to attempt to restore the ecosystem of our origin planet, D’Nar. Along with...the genetic viability of our own race.”
She came over and sat beside him, not touching him, but not letting him entirely get away either. “What do you mean?”
He licked his lips and stared off into space for a few moments before replying. “Our culture is highly militarized, in some ways like your Spartans. We grow up in barracks, we spend a significant portion of our time training and organizing in case of military venture or attack, and we place what has turned out to be...an overemphasis on masculinity as the marker of excellence.”
“That’s a little vague.” She watched his face, and he lowered his eyelashes for a moment before answering.
“We were very sexist, and we have...paid for it.” He gave her an embarrassed glance. “Men held all offices, as only blooded warriors could hold them and we did not allow our women to fight. Families valued boys above girls, so much so that they began using gene-alterers to ensure they produced only sons. This was where the problem started. Suddenly an entire generation of D’Nari were almost exclusively male. Laws were passed, but the damage was done. The gene-alterers ended up permanently changing our genetic makeup. Nine out of ten viable offspring of my people are now boys. Fertile women are so rare that they constitute perhaps one in one hundred. Our people are dying, May, thanks to our own arrogance and folly. It has been my primary task to find a way to avert this disaster.”
“By finding compatible women. Genetically compatible women.”
He nodded mutely, drew a breath, and went on. “Women who can not only interbreed with us, but survive both the mating and the gestation. We have approached...two hundred different worlds in the last century alone, trying to find a race that could mix safely with our own.”
“Two hundred,” she breathed. “What happened?”
He looked down, blinking rapidly. “We had a few who...might have worked, except...things happened. One race could produce children, but those children were chronically ill, and their mothers generally died in childbirth. Another bride-race was too delicate, and responded poorly to the bacteria strains that populate our bodies. A third could not withstand the...intensity...of the mating process.”
Her eyebrows went up. “How intense are we talking?”
He stared at her, something like naked hunger in his eyes, edged with frustration. “We are a psychically gifted race. Our biomanipulation abilities tend to...feed back...when we experience strong emotion.”
“So what you are saying is that those healing abilities of yours go wild when you get hot enough. And the girls from this race...what?” Orgasmed to death?
“They died of exhaustion. It...sounds more positive than it was. Dead of pleasure is still...dead.” He actually looked a little embarrassed...and mournful.
“...Wow.” She tilted her head. “So...you go around testing women of different races to see if things could work out.”
“Yes. Humans are only the latest potential bride race. We had noticed a great deal of baseline genetic compatibility, but we still have no idea if you...if women from this world...could survive better than the previous candidates.”
“Your little test said I could,” she pointed out, taking what she considered an educated guess. He startled just slightly and looked at her. She shrugged. “You saw the readout, got all excited and went to call someone I am only guessing was your boss. Given what you just told me….”
“Yes,” he said simply. “Humans and D’Nari appear to be genetically compatible. You are also similar in the bacterial strains that you carry, your digestion, your basic biology and sexuality. But...we don’t yet know if you could survive carrying our children...or mating with us.”
She stared him right in the eyes. “I’d volunteer to try that last one in about a heartbeat.”
He sucked air and his eyes got bright again. “I am wary of the risk….”
“You’ll never really know unless someone tries, right?”
He reached out, then, touching her face, where her eye had been beaten shut just over a day ago. Healed now, thanks to him. “I do not wish to hurt you.”
“You don’t know that you’re going to hurt me, Corin. And right now you’re hurting. We’re both hurting. Your people are hurting. How are you planning to make sure of that anyway, if nobody ends up getting naked? More blood tests?”
“I--I….” his hand slid down her shoulder, trailing warmth....and then he dared slide it lower, gently brushing against her breast. But then he pulled away again. “This isn’t about what I want….”
“Then you do want it.” Heat settled in the pit of her belly and suddenly her filmy gown felt too constricting. “You want me.”
“More than you could possibly know,” he murmured in a deep voice. “But it would cause me much anguish if our pleasures caused you harm. Those women...we loved them, May. We wished to take them as our wives. It was personal. It is always personal. But so many of our men, untouched until then, ended up with their lovers dying in their arms. The shame of it...knowing that we had done this to them….”
“Hey.” she scooted nearer to him, so that their knees touched. “Hey. Look. My life was over before you found me, Corin, and without you I wouldn’t have it back. I would rather take the risk than never have you.” Her fingertips brushed against his knee, and she felt heat radiate upward from his skin, striking sparks in the nerve endings of her hands. He was already losing a fraction of his control.
She stood and leaned over him as he sat on the couch, and he looked up at her in mild shock in the moment before she kissed him. His mouth was wide and warm. He froze, uncertainty seeming to paralyze him before he slowly started to respond. He reached up, hands settling on her shoulders and then running up and down them caressingly. She clambered up onto the couch, straddling him--and he caught her in his arms.
He groaned low in his throat as his kiss went from hesitant to fervent. His hands started skimming over her body, up and down her back, over her belly, finally settling on her breasts to softly cup and caress and knead. She whimpered and arched them into his hands, breaking t
he kiss to whisper, “don’t stop.”
He pulled her against him then, roughly, and buried his face in her neck, nuzzling and nipping and kissing her skin while his mouth kept striking little sparks of sensation through her nerves. His breath was growing harsh as she squirmed against him, and as she slid a hand between them, she felt that the crotch of his pants was tented hard enough that it probably hurt him.
“Come on,” she purred, shifting her weight and tugging at his shirtfront as she leaned back onto the couch. He lay down over her, mouth leaving bruising kisses from her lips to the tops of her breasts, tremors going through him constantly now. “We can do this...it’s all right….”
An angry beeping sounded from behind one of the closed doors. His head shot up as he stiffened, suddenly all business again. “That’s the proximity alarm. We have visitors.” He got off of her in one smooth motion, rolling to his feet and heading for the room the noise was coming from. Before he stepped through the door, he looked back at her. “Be prepared to hide.”
“Uuff…” She lay there aching for a moment, her entire body keyed up and left frustrated. “Whoever’s at the door, I may very well kill them.”
Chapter 5: Siege
May got up and headed for the door to her room...then hesitated. He was used to giving orders, but why was she simply following them? Survival situation, she was still weak, but...something about simply running and hiding bothered her right now. Not just because of her intense frustration at the moment, but also because...if there was a risk, seasoned space-soldier or not, she didn’t feel Corin should face it alone right now. If she didn’t do something and he died….
She stopped at the threshold just as the door to the communications room opened and Corin came out with a look of grim irritation on his face. “Don’t come outside,” he warned her. “Some of the locals have been looking for me, apparently, and they just recognized my Jeep.”
The breath froze in her lungs. She knew who that meant. Her stepbrother and his thug friends. Maybe even the ones in uniform. “How...how did they possibly find us?”
“That, I have yet to determine. I assume however that as it is hunting season, one of them ranged further out than I anticipated in search of deer.” He had a small silver pistol in his hand, of the same brushed-metal design as his appliances, and a row of green lights blinking along the side. He tightened his grip on the weapon and the row of lights turned red one by one.
“In this matter, I am afraid there is no recourse...though in this particular case I see no reason to regret the deaths of such...individuals. They will disappear on their hunting trip. A small amount of data and telepathic manipulation by my operants will ensure that they will be assumed to have wandered off the edge of the gorge and fallen into the river.”
“Corin, they’ll all be armed, and that bastard’s got at least six buddies in his hunting club. If he ropes in his two deputies….” She opened her mouth to tell him not to go out there--and he gave her a warning look, and she nodded and went quiet.
Corin stood calmly as he mulled these new facts. “Nine men. Possibly more if they made some late connections. Armed with projectile weapons, possibly knives. I see.” He went back into the communications room and came back with a second pistol. This he keyed up the same way, and settled at his side. He lifted his chin. “That should be sufficient.”
“Give me a weapon,” she begged. “If you won’t stay here then at least give me something to--”
“I don’t have time to instruct you in its use,” he dismissed distractedly, and left her staring after him as he went back to the communications room a last time to check something.
“External sensors confirm one dozen large humans carrying heavy caliber firearms. Three wear light underclothing armor consistent with law enforcement.”
Her heart started pounding. She moved toward him, eyes pleading. “That’s too many--”
His eyes gleamed with a strange sort of ardor she could only think must be battle-hunger. “No. I have faced far more and triumphed.”
“Tom and those bastards don’t fight fair--” she started, but he dismissed her again, heading for the door. “...damn it.” His confidence turned her on, but he was so stubborn!
She sighed and leaned on the communications-room door...which shifted a little. He had forgotten to lock it. As he disappeared into the kitchen, headed apparently for the rear door, she opened the communications room door quickly and slipped inside.
Monitors. Many, many monitors, some covered with that strange calligraphic-looking writing, some showing images. Eagle-eye view of the cottage and the land around it, out to about a mile. Figures converging from every direction. The ones heading in via the driveway walked up without trying to hide themselves, while others crawled up the back of the hill. It was like watching a scene being set up in a movie.
But he had seen this very monitor, and he knew the score. She watched him emerge from a door far to the rear of the cottage, in back of the crawling men instead of inside their circle. He immediately crouched and started creeping up on them, aiming both pistols at a pair of stragglers.
No shining rays or balls of light exited the strange weapons in his hands, but both men convulsed suddenly--and vanished, rifles and all, leaving behind blurry black outlines that rapidly faded. Two down. May’s stomach gave a little flip as Corin rolled to the side behind some bushes and then started stalking more of the still-oblivious hunters.
“Get them,” she whispered as she sat before the monitor watching. “Get those bastards. Make them disappear.”
Watching him pick them off unnerved May with how good it felt. Each one of the men in Tom’s hunting party had been at that auction. Every one of them was about the worst humanity had to offer around here, and every one of them would kill Corin happily if Tom talked them into it. They had to die. And in these particular cases, she wanted them to die.
As she stared at the screen, breath hitching in her throat, she wondered at how sad it was that she had to side against her fellow humans to survive, and get a little of her own back. Maybe she was just traumatized. Maybe it was years of old rage. Maybe in her head, every last one of those men had basically become an extension of Tom: Tom’s power, Tom’s influence, Tom’s determination to make every minute of her life miserable.
She was strong enough now to feel that rage, and she directed it at the men on the screen with a vehemence that alarmed her. But she couldn’t fight it. They had drawn their battle lines, and now she intended to watch every last one of those poor excuses for humans die like the first two.
Corin crept up on a third hunter, tucking a blaster away and instead simply slipping a hand around the man’s neck from behind. His target stiffened, dropping his rifle, and went pale, then withered looking--like the snake from before. His eyes rolled back in his head, and Corin let him drop, wiping his hand on his uniform trousers disdainfully. The body started to decay rapidly, blackening and sinking into the soil.
Maybe he really could take them all. May licked her lips as she watched. She was enjoying this. Not just watching the men die, but watching Corin fight and win. Now he was climbing the back of one of the tall pines to crouch in the high branches, and snipe four more men one by one.
Their bodies carbonized silently, without even the thump of a body hitting the ground. Their fellows didn’t notice, continuing to close in on the front of the building. She realized without much shock that they were drunk.
Unfortunately, she also noticed that they had all reached the clearing around the building, giving Corin no more cover under which to quietly kill them.
“Damn it!” He had taken out half of them, but it wasn’t enough. The three cops were already trying to kick the front door in. Of course, they wouldn’t succeed, but she flinched every time Tom’s heavy foot slammed against the wood. She only hoped the sound attracted Corin’s annoyed response--and quickly.
That wasn’t the only trouble brewing out there. Two men had stopped by the Jeep and were f
iddling with it somehow. She couldn’t really see, and she couldn’t read the controls that might have let her zoom in. But they seemed to be loading some narrow, foot-long objects into the jeep through one of the windows.
Corin decided to challenge the rest directly before things got worse, and did so by striding up over the top of the earth-sheltered building, staring down at Tom and his deputies coldly. “I suggest that you get away from my front door.”
“Finally you decide to show up, you son of a bitch!” Tom looked up at him while everyone but the two by the Jeep aimed their rifles at him. “We need to talk about that fake money you gave me for my property!”
Corin folded his arms. “I discovered that you were selling that woman illegitimately, and thus I canceled the value of your funds. If you have some protest, I suggest that you take it up with your superiors in law enforcement. Mention in particular the part about selling someone as a slave.” He wagged a finger. “Tch.”